cast

I cast the two female leads yesterday. Add these two girls to John as Frank and we have a strong core cast.

It's really starting to come together. When you see actors actually bringing the lines to life, it is very exciting.

I'm in love with this movie.

I got the latest hosting overage bill for CINEMA EYE today. It was big.

I have to rethink what I'm doing with that site. At least my search engine optimization tricks have been a big success. Maybe too successful. I get tons of people looking for pictures from TROY, news about Mandy Moore and the latest details on the Davinci Code movie.

Right now I get weird mail just about every day about a Davinci Code story we printed ages ago.

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From:
To: christopher@cinemaeye.com
Subject: Ron Howard & The DaVinci Code

I may be using the wrong forum, and if so, I apologize, but I would love to be able to get in touch with Ron Howard and give him my thoughts on wasting his considerable talents on this piece of trash. Obviously I have just declared my religious position, which is fine; I am a Christian and what I have learned of the book without reading it makes it, to me, nothing short of blasphemous fiction.

If there is a way I can reach him by e-mail, I would appreciate your sending it along to me. Fortunately we are still all entitled to our own opinion, and I would like to be able to share this one with him.

Thank you for your assistance.

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From: "Pam Peterson"
To:
Subject: CASTING FOR DAVINCI CODE

Christopher-
Pass this on to the powers that be-
RUSSELL CROWE AND KATE BECKINSALE ARE TOTALLY WRONG FOR THE LEADS IN THIS MOVIE.
NO FLAIR AND CERTAINLY NO INTERNATIONAL FLAVOR TO MAKE THE ROLES BELIEVABLE.

Please consider Ralph Fiennes (Langdon) and Juliette Binoche (Sofia) for the lead roles.

Thank you.
xxxxxxx@yahoo.com

Stewart O'Nan

I can't watch television anymore.

There are a few things that I still enjoy - DEADWOOD, THE SHIELD... - but for the most part the general clamor and pointlessness of the shows make it almost impossible for me to watch anything. It's not just that the subject matter is getting stupider - but so is the level of visual literacy. Recent movies are proving to me just as much as a trial for me.

When I see a shows like the MTV MOVIE AWARDS and movies like VAN HELSING, I completely understand why the terrorists want to wipe us off the face of the earth.

So in my small amount of time away from working on CLOUD SYMPHONY and SEX MACHINE, I've been doing quite a bit of reading and spending a lot of time at Border's looking about books, thinking about writing, seeing what my old favorite authors are up to...

Killing time on the web today I learned that my college writing teacher, Stewart O'Nan is doing a book with Stephen King about the Boston Red Sox '04 Season.. Very good news. This collaboration should definitely serve to expose O'Nan's work to a wider audience.

I only had O'Nan for a few classes over a single school year, but it was easily the most I got out of the whole college experience.

I'm a little bit embarrassed of the bullshit I wrote while I had him as a professor. Lame stories about drugged out satanists, washed out porn stars and as much sex and violence as I could get away with. Despite the subject matter, O'Nan was one of the few teachers I've ever had that was genuinely interested in my work and really took it apart line-by-line, explaining what worked, what was stylistically sloppy, etc. That period is one of the only times in my life when I've been genuinely thrilled to get revisions back.

The thing that really drives me crazy is that I have somehow lost/misplaced the porn-star novel I wrote during that time period. I'm planning on reviving it as a film project in the very near future and if I could find that draft it would save me a lot of time - and heartbreak.

But back to O'Nan. He's an incredible writer. And if you read at all there are a couple of books you must check out: O'Nan is a literary writer as opposed to a genre writer. The following recommendations are fairly quick reads and very accessible to new readers.

1. Snow Angels - His first published novel. It's very short but it's a beautiful read about some white trash characters, a boy growing up and a murder. I read it every other year or so.

2. Speed Queen - This is the book he was actually writing while he was teaching at U.C.O. At that time, he intended for the title to be "Dear Stephen King." Apparently, at that time, he couldn't get the title cleared, so it ended up seeing publication as "The Speed Queen." Still a very interesting book, set in Oklahoma City and Edmond which is of special interest to the Oklahoma readers.

3. A Prayer for the Dying - An absolutely excruciating and scary novel about a disease outbreak in a small Wisconsin town just after the Civil War.

Whether the subject matter interests you or not, if you like good writing, you will enjoy these books -- and probably the rest of O'Nans body of work as well.

progress

1. Callback auditions with several actors. K---- is awesome, but the more I think about it, the more I feel like I need to cast her as Zoe. Ultimately it's about doing the right thing for both the movie and the actor. She could pull off Claire, i have no doubts. But I think she would really shine as Zoe and bring that role to life. John is already doing a great job reading as Frank.

2. Tyler came over to work on the fight moves with John. I'm increasingly impressed with this guy. The moves he worked out were very cool, very fluid, very interesting. And John picked them up very quickly.

3. John and I finally got all the FOR HER files together in one place. We'll knock this out in the next week or so. Played around with the Magic Bullet Editors color correction plug-ins for FCP. Very nice. I'm getting lots of ideas. I need to scrape together the $300 for the full version of this.

4. Shogo and I edited about four scenes for CLOUD SYMPHONY including a complicated dialogue scene that took a long time. Editing conversations in a language you don't understand is harder than it might seem at first.

5. Dave Curd came over with tattoo designs and two big bottles of rum. As always, the Queen soundtrack for Flash Gordon came up in conversation which led to the Tenacious D concert being played.

good news

1. Went to just about every bowling alley in town and there's jut no comparison. 66 Bowl is the only place to shoot this flick. I just love that place. We went by and talked to the owner who is just one of those truly nice guys. We don't have anything in writing yet, but gave us the verbal okay. Awesome.

2. Also, the art department at U.C.O. is on board as far as us using their life drawing class room and one of their art galleries. They were exceedingly nice and helpful as well.

3. Got a decent sized check from a client today.

4. Met with two actors yesterday and was very impressed with both of them.

5. Tyler sent me fight breakdowns yesterday. He has developed a fighting style that fits each character and is very much in sync with the film. Very impressed with these as well.

6. Met with Amy today about doing some conceptual production design sketches. She's very talented so it's cool to have her on board, particularly for the very difficult last sequence.

7. John is back in town and ready to roll. He's coming over on Saturday to read with a few of our potential actors. this is when we will really be able to tell who is right and wrong for the different roles.

10:12

Shogo and I cut on CLOUD SYMPHONY yesterday and Friday night. So far we have five scenes down and a rough running time of 10 minutes 12 seconds.

The editing is going remarkably well. Probably due to the fact that we got good coverage during the shoot. But we also spent a lot of time organizing before we started cutting. My advice to new editors: make well organized, well labelled bins.

progress

I've had about a week to look at headshots and think over how we are actually going to cast this project. It's really like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. They all have to work together. The problem right now is that people are kind of scattered for different summer things. I want to get all my leading contenders together in a room and do a reading.

Some of my choices are fairly unconventional and will surely prove not to be popular with some of the core people involved with this project. That being said, I'm pretty excited. I've delivered a couple of full scripts and had some further meetings with the actors involved... warned them of the commitment level required, etc.

So if everybody jibes, we will make an actual announcement and get some photos taken for promo purposes which I will of course post here.

It's going to be a wild wild ride for the next three months.

Now I have to spend the rest of the weekend doing client work which I am sadly very much slacking on.

busy

auditions on saturday went well. A little overwhelming. But I could cast from who I saw if I needed to. A lot of very talented people. Actually I was impressed with the caliber of talent, especially the people who came in from unusual places (i.e. people we found through the internet, flyers, vox ad, etc.)

now is the really hard work. Narrowing it down. Figuring out which actors look right together. Figuring out who will really have the commitment to last out the summer. The real hard part is knowing that people will be disappointed when the don't get the part they really want. but... there will be future projects. things have a way of working out. Can't worry about that at this point.

Also, shogo and i logged and sorted ALL the CLOUD SYMPHONY footage last night. Took about four hours -- not including the break for shrimp and beer at margaritas restaurant -- and the break for cigarettes on the back porch. the editing system is doing very well, especially since we are working with huge uncompressed files. I am a complete FCP junkie. Fuck avid! Footage looks amazing. I'm not sure how it's going to cut together into a story, but that part is up to shogo.

We got more painting done on the interior of the house - rooms we are going to use as sets. The place already feels a lot better. We are trying to make lots of open space. A place that fosters creativity.

frank smash

Here is a Jack Kirby inspired rendering of some of the Sex Machine action! Art by the fabulous Dave Curd (who I am trying to rope into being a part of our production design crew). Make sure to check out Daves web site.